REMARKS PRELIMINARY TO AN ORDINATION OF ELDERS AND DEACONS

IN REGENT SQUARE CHURCH, ON SUNDAY MORNING, JAN. 26TH, 1890.

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

EXODUS xviii. 18-23.

This is

Of course here, my friends, we are Presbyterians. Regent Square Presbyterian Church; and we consider that a name of joy, and a title of very high and honourable mention indeed. But it would be utterly unworthy of an occasion like this, and of a gathering like this, where we have come to worship God and to hear His Word, that I should make my sermon a Plea for and a Defence of Presbytery. We have not met for that. That may be important, and, on fitting occasion, of great use; and I trust we are ready, if there is to be controversy, to stand up for ourselves, and to show cause why we are Pres. byterians rather than members of other denominations. But we shall rather take up this subject this morning because we all believe in some kind of government, we all believe in some kind of order and decency and rule in connection with the practical out-working of congregational life in the No. 12.

house and in the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And we turn to this particular passage because there are here some practical ideas of universal application. You see them here, also, away from the controversy that might be too much suggested by special names and functions, such as Presbyter, Elder, Deacon, Bishop, and so on, did we find our text in some of those classical portions we have already read together in the Acts and 1st Epistle to Timothy.

The first thing I wish to notice-and I must be brief to-day, so that we may go through our Ordination Service quietly and in order-the first thing is that the organization that came out of this talk between Jethro and Moses was marked by great common sense. Common sense! If we are to have different organizations, different systems of working out Christ's will among His people, and carrying out His cause through all the ends of the earth, let us see to it that the tone of old Jethro is carried with us through all our plans, through all our ways, and through all our works. That is very noticeable here. It is noticeable again in the New Testament when the special order of deacons was created. The immediate feeling on the part here of one man, and in the New Testament on the part of a number of men, was "Now we are departing from sense, from common business reason and understanding. Jethro says, This thing that thou doest is not good; thou wilt surely wear thyself away;" and the Apostles in the Book of Acts, at a critical juncture like this, say, "It is not meet that we should leave the Word of

God, to go and serve tables." Let there be a division of labour; let us find out whether among the company of ourselves, there is not all that is needed for every crisis, and for the Christian work of to-day, all to our hand." Why should one man be allowed to be eyes for everybody and ears for everybody and hands and feet for everybody! Let us have more eyes than one man's, more hands than just one pair; although we will all admit that Moses' hands were big and capacious. Let us have more hearts bent and strained over this business of looking after God's Israel than simply one when more are needed, and when we have every expectation that God will be with us in this sub-division of labour. It will be proved to be according to His will just because it is so according to common sense and right reason.

So we do not enter into any great and high arguments today in order to prove that Presbyterianism is the way of working out Christianity, and the only way. We will not be tempted into trying to prove that there is a text which says straight from heaven, "Thus saith the Lord, thou shalt be a Presbyterian." We will not contend that; but coming to the Old Testament story, we will see the reasonableness and common sense of having some order and some form of government. "Let all things be done decently and in order," says the Apostle Paul; and Jethro, centuries— millenniums before him, is wonderfully much on the same line. "Moses," he says, "there is a want of decency, there is a suppression of everybody's talent and everybody's endowment that yours and yours alone may be drawn

upon. There is a want of decency and a want of order: this thing that thou dost is not good. Thou shalt surely wear away, both thou and this people that is with thee, for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone." And here Presbyterianism joins with other 'isms and says, "We will have no 'one man ministry' in a peculiar and special sense, on the simple ground that it is not common sense. No man is able to bear the burden of God's house and of God's work in a congregation, or in a denomination, alone. When we gather round Moses and his difficulties and dismiss all technicalities and discussions, we find we are all Jethroites—if I may name a new denomination; we are all Jethroites for the time being. We strike our hands and say, "This is reason,

this is sense."

Let us trouble ourselves less-especially some of our brethren of the one Household of Faith-about jus divinum, &c., &c., and see to it more that Moses, the minister, is not allowed to kill himself with too much work, or somebody who differs from him with too much tyranny! All our 'isms" have a tendency to produce Popes; but the cure grace and sense in the management.

is

How helpful it is occasionally, either in Old Testament or New Testament times, to have a man coming from the outside, a man to whom this whole on-going is new, and a man who will look on it with critical, but not unkindly eyes; a man related to us, like Jethro, Moses' father-in-law. The other morning I spoke of the mother-in-law, and made her a sample of

what was unfortunate in relationship. Here we have the marriage relationship coming out in all that is helpful; and I was not forgetting that in connection with Nehemiah, though I did not speak of it. Here, let it be frankly admitted, is the other side, showing itself in the best and most helpful way. What a help, I say, to have outside eyes looking on us, and offering us their criticisms. You do not find Moses turning round and saying, “Now my respectable and venerable friend, mind your own business, and I shall mind mine. You may have your way of doing things down in Midian, but we do things here in our own way. This affair is my own creation; I began it, and I will see it through. When I begin to feel I am needing your help, I will call you in; meanwhile you need say nothing until you are asked."

Well, there is sometimes a "standoffishness" of tone like that. It is not reasonable nor sensible. Moses showed his greatness and his all-roundness by virtually saying, “Well, now, a man coming from the outside may see things far better than myself, for I am immersed in this business of looking after Israel; I am sunk into it to the very eyes; I am so near to it that I am perhaps not able to see matters in their true perspective. According to the old proverb, the man on the dyke always plays well; and it may be this man who is looking at us as he sits on the dyke sees weaknesses in us that we do not see, and we will listen to what he has to say." And the upshot was he did listen, and the Lord put His stamp and seal on the arrangement. It is one of the grand illustrations that we are not to look in the Bible for a special "Thus saith the Lord" for every